Understanding Stellaris Ethics, Traits, and Governments Guide

This guide essentially provides an overview of all available Ethics, Traits, and Governments in Stellaris. You will not only be find a brief explanation about each one’s obvious as well as secret/bonus effects.

In addition to this, our Stellaris Ethics, Traits, and Governments guide also categorizes each of these in Strong, Situational, and Weak. Strong basically means that you cannot go wrong with the particular choice as it remains strong in almost all the cases.

Situational essentially means that a particular choice can prove to be really good or really bad depending upon the situation you are in. And finally, Weak means that a particular choice is either an overkill, does not justify its points, or is outright bad.

Stellaris Ethics, Traits, and Governments Guide

As always, if there is something else you would like to know, do make sure to let us know!

Ethics

Collectivist – SituationalPurpose: Slavery, Purge, Anti-Divergence

Slavery Tolerance is strong and pretty good for slavery races. However, do note that this does not affect your own POPs so conquered races will have their concerns about it. Ethnic Divergence modifiers are nice, but an overkill and Purge is a strong mechanic. Collectivist basically gives you a lot of control, but limited efficiency.

Individualist – SituationalPurpose: Efficiency, Energy, Happiness

The energy tile yield bonus is very powerful during the early game and is the strongest of the 3 production types. Later down the road, you will need less Power Plants which essentially means using planet tiles for buildings such as labs. Slavery Tolerance restricts you from using slavery, but also prevents your guys from being enslaved. Being locked out of government is not as bad as with Collectivist. This can be considered as having little control, but more efficiency.

Militarist – SituationalPurpose: War, Navy, Army

The military benefits in the game are not too good. Since mid and early game wars are decided in the space, the army does not play much of a role. Extra Influence from Rivalry and full orbital bombardment are quite powerful. As for unique buildings and getting more military tech, they do not provide much benefits. Lastly, do note that you need to be at war and not actually fight in order to get the happiness bonus.

Pacifist – SituationalPurpose: Diplomacy, Happiness, Tech

If you are looking forward to good relations, extra embassies can be good. Army Damage and the Food bonus does not come into play. As for unique building and habitability, these can be good for mid-game. Furthermore, you need to try and have more empire tech and few army techs, even if you plan to go to war.

Spiritualist – WeakPurpose: Happiness, Psionic, Roleplaying

One of the major drawbacks of Spiritualist is insane opportunity cost. you will not only be able to use robots without happiness penalty, but will not have unique building. Other than that, Psionic are okay, but are not a unique tech for spiritualists.

Materialist – StrongPurpose: Science, Robots, Efficiency

This is probably one of the best ethic choice you can make in the game. you will not only have the best unique building, but also pretty decent edict. Moreover, robots are pretty powerful when it comes to increasing efficiency and POP growth of your empire. This becomes even better with the fact that you can go to Synthetics.

Contrary to Materialist, this is probably the worst ethic choice you can make in the game. you will get decent diplomacy bonus, but other than that you will not get nothing good for your empire and will not be able to make sure to edict. Moreover, it will not help you all that much with Federations.

Traits

Agrarian – Weak – 2 Points
An excess of food has limited effect on POP growth and is potentially useless once a planet is filled up. Moreover, you are very likely to get 10% food tech during the early years.

Thrifty – Situational – 2 Points
With this, you will get early Energy bonus which is useful for supporting the early Offworld spam and in order to keep energy relevant through the course of the game. Moreover, a lot of your empire’s energy production will be tile-based which will allow you to get 10% energy income for your empire which basically means less power plants.

Industrious – Weak – 2 Points
Since your early and mid-game Mineral income will come from offworlds, this trait is not as good as it sounds. Moreover, you can always use robots for a huge mineral yield bonus instead of this.

Intelligent – Strong – 2 Points
Since Science is strong during early and mid-game, this trait is the way to go. This will come in handy even if you are trying to go with Synthetics in the late game.

Natural Engineers – Strong – 1 Point
This can be considered as specialized version of Intelligent at a lower cost. Since it has the strongest military techs, this is one of the strongest traits.

Natural Physicists – Strong – 1 Point
Since Physics tree only a handful of important techs, it is not as strong as other two natural traits.

Natural Sociologists – Strong – 1 Point
This has Empire and Colonization techs, but is not as good as Natural Engineers.

Extremely Adaptive – 5 Points
This is good for colonizing different worlds and recommended for happiness-based builds.

Adaptive – Situational – 2 Points
Since it allows 90% habitability on homeworld type planets, it is recommended for happiness-based races. However, if you are not focusing on happiness, it is potentially useless.

Non-Adaptive – Weak – 1 Point
This is not designed for someone with happiness-based build or more aptly anyone. It is like wasting a point if you are planning on colonizing low habitability worlds.

Rapid Breeders – Situational – 1 Point
This is a decent early game trait, but as you begin to colonize planets outside the Homeworld, it becomes irrelevant.

Slow Breeders – Situational – 1 Point
This may cause a handful of problems in early game, but is decent for robot-based race with less micromanagement of food.